Week 4: Ending Atkins and Moving On

Current Weight:  236.8 lbs.

Tough Mudder Countdown: 90 days

Routine Completed:
	Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thurs.	Fri.	Sat.	Sun.
Week 1	Chest & Back	Plyometrics	Shoulders & Arms	Yoga X	Legs & Back	Circle B Ranch 5k	I’m Sleeping, leave me alone…
	Battle Ropes	Cranes Roost 5k	Battle Ropes	Treadmill 5k	Battle Ropes
Week 2	Chest & Back	Plyometrics	Shoulders & Arms	Yoga X	-	-	-
	Battle Ropes	Recumbant Bike (45min)	Recumbant Bike (45min)	Recumbant Bike (45min)	-	-	-
Week 3	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
	-	Recumbant Bike (45min)	Recumbant Bike (45min)	Recumbant Bike (45min)	-	-	-
Week 4	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
	-Recumbant Bike (25min) -Elliptical (20 min)	-Recumbant Bike (25min) -Elliptical (20 min)	-Recumbant Bike (25min) -Elliptical (20 min)	-Recumbant Bike (25min) -Elliptical (20 min)	-	-	-

            So after doing Atkins for 2 weeks I learned a very important lesson: don’t…at least if you want to live an active lifestyle. If you’ve been following my previous blogs, you’ll know I started doing a stationary recumbent bike and cutting down to only one workout a day as to conserve energy while on Atkins. I learned while doing why you are not supposed work out on Atkins…you don’t recover.

When you’re on the Atkins diet, you put your body into starvation mode by depriving it of carbs, which works GREAT if you do not like going to the gym and want to lose weight. The downside is when you do that the body puts all of its resources and spare energy into conserving brain function and ignoring everything else, such as repairing fatigued muscles, say, from riding a stationary bike for a ridiculous amount of time. My right hip started to ache the second day doing a 45 minute cycle routine and it hasn’t stopped hurting for the entire two week period, gradually getting worse. I talked to a few of my friends in various health fields and did some research to conclude that it was my lack of carbs causing the pain. My muscles were only sending energy to the brain to preserve its function and not the rest of my torn muscles after working out to repair them, so it just kept getting worse and worse. I ate carbs as normal yesterday morning and throughout the day yesterday and today, and now my hip is practically pain free and completely better.

This experiment has definitely taught me that Atkins is definitely not for someone who intends to actually live a healthy and active lifestyle, but more to look the part of someone who actually has a good metabolism or might have a health condition keeping them from doing a normal workout routine.

            Doing this diet did give me one huge advantage I’ve been trying to attain for years and have not been able to achieve until now, and that is that I can now actually order, eat, and enjoy salads (and have become quite fond of the restaurant known as Sweet Tomatoes)! So for the next week I am going to focus on getting back to eating low calories and doing light cardio, letting my body adjust to consuming carbs again, and the following week resume lifting weights. I was considering going back to p90x again but honestly I would like to see if I can develop my own more effective routine, possibly with kettle bells, speed ropes, and shadow boxing (I have always been rather fond of boxer training methods and the fighting style, so why not look into it).

     Given my attempt at Atkins I thought this quote to be rather fitting for this week.

“Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being, while movement and methodical physical exercise save it and preserve it.”

– Plato

Will

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